


The Matter of Dreams

by we_could_be_heroes



Category: The Monstrumologist Series - Rick Yancey
Genre: Established Relationship, First Time, M/M, Time Travel, dream dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/we_could_be_heroes/pseuds/we_could_be_heroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A time travel fic without the time travel: Will dreams about meeting twenty-year-old Warthrop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Matter of Dreams

It took him exactly an hour before he gave in.

He sorted letters for a while, separating them into four stacks as Pellinore had taught him: crackpot ("Dear Sir, after years of trial and error, I have managed to synthesize the essence of immortality. I will grant you the privilege of assisting me with its mass production"), personal ("How are you, dear Pellinore, I hope you still remember your old friend") _,_ of interest ("...writing to report an unusual sighting, it might be nothing, but all signs point to a possible re-emergence of a long unseen species...") and what Pellinore called feedback and Will nicknamed vanity ("...to thank you for your invaluable help in sorting out this matter, yours faithfully Andrew Carnegie, Nikola Tesla or, the best option, Grover Cleveland").

But he could not stay focused for very long, skipping across paragraphs and coming dangerously close to mistaking crackpot for vanity, which certainly would not please the monstrumologist. He heated up some water and went down to the laboratory, picking up a couple of grimy beakers and a variety of slicing, cutting and disemboweling utensils and started cleaning them - but his heart was not in it and he even failed to employ his usual system of degrees of dirtiness which minimized the number of times he had to change the water.

He put down the dirty cloth and sighed. He looked at the clock on the wall: could it really have been only 56 minutes since Pellinore left?

"Alright," he said aloud, "I'll do it, this is the perfect chance."

He bounced back up the stairs to the hallway and then to the library and through there to the study where the massive carved desk stood, beckoning him with its allure of secrecy.

He put his hand on the black oak and paused, absurdly, looking around. Pellinore seemed to possess an uncanny ability to materialize at any place of the Harrington Lane mansion at any - and usually the most inopportune - moment. Right now, however, Will was alone in the house, of course. Pellinore was on his way to Boston and it was highly improbable that he would return unexpectedly - it was just Will's bad conscience making him paranoid. Still, Will thought that his snooping was more justified than it was objectionable. It was simply a way to compensate for the discrepancy in their relationship.

He unlocked the second drawer and pulled it open, remembering a night from several weeks ago when Pellinore pulled him close and said: "I like it when you do that, no one has ever done that for me before." Rather than take it for the compliment it was meant to be, Will, against his better judgment, chose to hear it as the confirmation of the incontrovertible fact that other people had done other things before him.

It bothered him, he couldn't help it and there was no way to solve it - Pellinore never mentioned his previous loves other than as examples of failure and disappointment and Will could never imagine discussing any physical details of those relationships with him, given that they barely discussed theirs. Will reasoned that if he knew more about those affairs, he would be less intimidated by them. His thoughts thus began to gravitate toward the second drawer of the desk in Pellinore's study which he had known for a long time to be out of bounds to him. It was locked and while Pellinore never made it any secret where the key was - inside an unlikely flower-patterned porcelain cup nearby - it was an outspoken agreement between them that Will would not open it. And he never wanted to, not particularly, until that night.

Looking inside the drawer now, Will saw there were about three dozen letters, all belonging to the fifth and secret stack: private. Will hesitated again, but then his jealousy won and he scooped the letters up, sitting down at the desk to read them. To his surprise, all of them were from Muriel and all of them were written in tidy and slightly cramped handwriting - probably to accommodate for their length. Will leafed through them and found that Muriel poured her chaste girl's heart to Pellinore as if he were her diary: she described her daily activities, the walk in a park she took, the people she talked to, the books she read and how she felt about it all. Her prose was meandering, self-indulgent and, to Will's satisfaction, perfectly demure.

He felt a pang of remorse for having invaded the dead woman's thoughts which were not addressed to him; he wasn't even alive at the time she wrote them. But then he remembered how she had danced with him once and how she explained to him what being indispensable to Pellinore meant and thought that perhaps, she might not hold it against him that he read them. There was certainly nothing in the letters that could mar her memory with any indecency: Will found that both re-assuring and disappointing. There had to be more - he had himself personally met at least one other person who had been Pellinore's lover, but clearly the textual evidence for that had been destroyed.

He reached for the last envelope, a painfully flat one compared to the others that bulged with page upon page of confidentialities. Inside was nothing but a thin card ("In light of everything, I thought it best to return this. If you can, remember the good and forget the bad") and a photograph. Will was looking at the creased, yellowing back of it and he now turned it over and looked at the at once familiar and strange portrait of the monstrumologist as a young man.

It was the same face with sharp, becoming features, but they were somewhat softer too, with fuller cheeks, not yet harrowed by years of alternating melancholia and elation. The Pellinore of the photograph had not yet lost quite as much either - perhaps only his mother - and, at the time when the picture was taken, he had all he could possibly have in his life as neither of his mistresses, love or monstrumology, had ever betrayed him. Will traced his finger along the countoure of the black and white face. He knew every line of his living counterpart - the crease between the eyebrows, the wrinkles around his eyes, the lines by the corners of his mouth.  The face of the young man in the photograph was smooth, still innocent about the passage of time. His gaze, as captured by the camera, was a bit strained and hesitant, but the dark intensity was there too and Will thought it was no wonder Muriel could not bear to keep the picture.

He replaced the letters in the drawer, locked it and returned the key to its usual hiding place. The photograph he kept.

Having completed his clandestine mission, Will returned to his duties of sorting and cleaning and did them well, even meticulously, making up for the slight he had exacted on the unknowing Pellinore by breaching into the private matters of his past.

When night fell, Will went upstairs to their bedroom, crawled under the sheets on Pellinore's side of the bed and fooled himself for a while that he was going to fall asleep. After a while of tossing a turning, he lit the oil lamp on the nightstand (the monstrumologist considered the use of electric light bulbs for other means than illuminating his laboratory to be a waste of resources) and reached for the photo. He looked at the measured expression of the young and handsome man in it, a man who perhaps considered himself troubled or even suffering, but would not know actual trouble and suffering until later in his life, and imagined what it would be like if he had known him then.

How would he meet him? That was simple: at one of the meetings of the Monstrumological Society. Will smiled, picturing himself mesmerizing young Pellinore with his own detailed empirical experience with creatures aberrant, rare and dangerous.

The year was 1873 and they were the same age. Men's fashion had not yet embraced lounge suits with jackets and waistcoats, and therefore, as he passed the gentlemen in the long marble corridor, he saw they were dressed in longer frock coats and morning coats and displaying a variety of elaborate neckties. He spotted Pellinore easily: he was the tallest one and the least engaged in conversation. He was standing by himself at the very back of the corridor, slightly hunched in front of a glass case and scribbling something into a black leather notebook. Will approached him, looked over his shoulder into the case and saw that the rather pitiful dried remains of a creature quite familiar to Will.

"Ah, the Mongolian death worm," Will said, startling Pellinore into drawing the notebook possessively to his chest and turning to him with a frown. Will saw the familiar crease between his eyebrows form and understood why it was now permanently etched into his face. "I caught one in the Gobi this March."

"You did?" the crease deepened even more. "Why isn't it here then, instead of these scraps?"

"Unfortunately, I was forced to kill it after it attacked my assistant," Will shrugged. "A loss to science, but a gain for humanity."

Pellinore was looking at him, his dark eyes mistrustful. "You _killed_ a Mongolian death worm? I find that hard to believe."

"What you do or don't believe, sir, is your own affair, but as I was saying, I've had the specimen in my possession for quite a while and have done extensive research on it. In fact, the paper is just about to be published in London. So if you want to waste time trying to decipher something from this carcass, have at it."

Will turned around and sauntered away, leaving Pellinore behind, baited and ready for the switch. He walked down the wide, winding staircase and, just to give Pellinore enough time to think, reached into his pocket to check his watch. He was surprised to see that in his fantasy, he owned such an expensive item as this: the pocket watch was gold, complete with a monogram and a carving of - a rose and dove wings ... really? Probably a subconscious compensation for the fact that Pellinore would never consent to buying something like this in reality: "We already have one expensive pocket watch, Will Henry, owning two would just be a frivolity."

"Excuse me, sir," young Pellinore caught up with Will. "Please forgive my earlier skepticism, but well, a scientist is either skeptical or he is a fool," he chuckled at the insipid witticism and then blushed, seeing Will's stone-cold expression. "I was wondering, if - unless you are otherwise engaged-" he glanced at the lavish pocket watch, "you would grant me the pleasure of questioning you some more on the topic of your Gobian discovery?"

Will left him hanging for several seconds and then said: "To you, sir, I will happily grant any pleasure at all."

They went to The Golden Fleece, a high-end restaurant Will dreamed up to be right across the street. Pellinore led Will to its darkest corner so they could enjoy a semblance of privacy in the midst of the chattering crowd. Will ordered a glass of wine and Pellinore asked for the same. Later, they had carrot cake with coffee: clearly, Pellinore's tea and scones obsession had not yet taken roots. 

Although it only happened in his head, Will was very proud of how well he did at The Golden Fleece on that fictional day. He regaled Pellinore with the tale of his expedition to the heart of the Gobi, only briefly mentioning the practical details of travel and survival and focusing all his colorful description on the aberrant organism he sought: just the way Pellinore liked it. Though still a bit doubtful in the beginning, Pellinore became gradually convinced by Will's expert use of scientific diction and random drops of derision of myth and superstition. Will was beyond pleased when Pellinore took out the leather-bound notebook again and began taking notes.

When the subject of the death worm was at last exhausted, Pellinore asked Will about his other monstrumological exploits and Will, having now Pellinore's undivided attention, would have almost launched into describing them, again distilling the best from his time with Pellinore's older version, but then he realized the point of the fantasy was not to satisfy his ego, but rather to get to know the man from the photograph. And so he asked Pellinore about his own achievements, his papers and his plans, which made Pellinore excited to such extent that he overthrew a little vase in the middle of their table - twice (the waiter did not bring it back after the second incident).

"It was really extraordinary luck that we ran into each other, Mr. Henry, I have often wished to meet a friend of your qualities, someone to share my passion with. Alas, my fellows from the university ... I must sound like a besotted girl from a cheap novel to you, but this is really how I feel," Pellinore babbled.

"Please," said Will and touched Pellinore's hand, "call me William."

"Oh," Pellinore positively quivered, "alright then. You may call me Pellinore. I must say I have never made a friend so instantaneously, ever in my life, but I suppose there can be certain connections formed as naturally ... well, as naturally as constellations of stars, drawn together ... across the infiniteness of the universe ..."

Yes, Pellinore was still a poet back then, Will realized.

"But constellations are artificial, an arbitrary organization of the night's sky, an extreme feat of narcissism of man who wants to see his own reflection in everything," Will corrected him.

"Um, yes, I suppose ... you're right," Pellinore concurred, unoffended. He was looking at Will with respect and well, yes, fondness and Will felt a pang of regret at how generous and trusting Pellinore once was with his emotions.

They got up from their table, Pellinore offering to pay for both - he did not leave any tip, however, and Will would have almost felt sorry for the waiter had he not realized he, too, was a figment of his imagination.

It had gone dark outside and they walked arm in arm through the emptying streets; comfortable silence had replaced the long conversation. It was such a pleasant walk that Will would have almost forgotten he needed to take the initiative and create an imaginary place where they could go. He began contemplating where Pellinore might live, as a rich young scientist in 1870's New York, finally coming up with a building, stately but not too garish; a landlady, amiable, but a bit prying, a widow of course; other lodgers: an engineer researching the practical uses of electricity, a spinster with two canaries and an interest in charitable work; an old musician who plays the violin in the orchestra and reminisces about the romantic exploits of his youth ...

"This is where I live," Pellinore stopped, pointing to a large entryway. Will looked around in suprise. He still had his hand through the crook of Pellinore's arm, so he now extracted it and they hovered on the sidewalk.

"A worldly man like you must surely have some collection of exotic ... things he can show to visitors?" Will offered.

"Well, I don't have much to show off, really," Pellinore said.

"I find that hard to believe."

Pellinore looked sideways and then on his hands, hopefully thinking of something worth presenting. "The only thing I have is a moth collection; it's nothing, really."

Since he said it with his head turned down, Will did not quite catch whether it was moth or moss - but he supposed it came down to the same thing.

Inside the building, with just an oil lamp burning in the hall, Pellinore squinted at a heap of letters laid out on a cupboard, recognizing only two of them as addressed to himself.

"Don't worry, I'm sure your correspondence will multiply once you make your first great discovery," Will assured him.

Pellinore frowned, the crease that signified anything from irritation to self-doubt making a re-appearance, but before he could say anything, they heard a metallic sound of something sliding open and Pellinore took Will by his elbow and led him up the stairs: "That's Mrs. Applegate, she's watching."

Pellinore's rooms were rather nice, with wooden paneling, a large bookcase, a cozy fireplace, nice stuffed armchairs and a painting of a pastoral landscape, but it was clear it was a rented place. Some of the decorations were rather overdone and very unlike him. Will doubted that even as a young man Pellinore would condescend to buying something as obnoxious as a bronze child angel riding a prancing pony and assumed this was something the previous lodger left behind - until he realized that it was all in his head anyway. Meanwhile, a very lifelike young Pellinore now climbed on a chair to get something from the top of the bookcase.

Seated on the sofa, Will was then handed pinned, framed and glassed in corpses of moths of various shapes and colors (mostly dull brown or funeral gray, though). In return, Will patiently asked questions about what part of the world they were from, what function the pattern of their wings served and how they ate without a mouth (they didn't). Finally, they came to a particularly truculent-looking hairy specimen with curved feelers and huge black wings ornamented with white into the likeness of a skull.

"A gift - from my father," Pellinore said.

Will snorted, quickly covering his mouth with his hand. As Pellinore put the glass cases away on the mahogany table in front of them, Will hastened to come up with something to make up for his inappropriate reaction.

"What you said earlier, about the connection - I feel the same way," Will said and thinking that nothing ventured, nothing gained, placed his hand on Pellinore's knee.

Pellinore looked at the hand as if it was an undiscovered type of moth that just flew in. Then he looked away. "Oh?" 

"Have you read the Symposium?" Will pressed, turning to Plato for help.

"Yes, well, I'm not quite fluent in Greek, but I did read it and -"

"Yes, that's fine, so you know what it's about."

"I ... what do you think it's about?" Pellinore looked at Will, his dark brown eyes searching, his features set into the stern expression of controlled anticipation.

"This," said Will and kissed him.

He did not even get his tongue between his lips when Pellinore pushed him away, blushing and protesting: "But ... _we are both men_ , that's not-"

"Again, have you read the Symposium?"

"I have," Pellinore said. Will expected him to add some argument against them carrying on, but there was none; instead, Pellinore was looking at him, waiting for Will to make an argument in favor. That presented little to no problem.

"As an educated man and a scientist you can surely have no objection to us exploring another form of the connection we agreed we share."

"But ... not that I've never thought about it, but it seems pointless to-"

"Pellinore," said Will, "love is never pointless."

He reached for Pellinore's necktie and slowly unwound it, pulling the silky fabric away from Pellinore's neck, allowing the starched white collar to loosen and open. Pellinore watched Will's face as he did so and then took Will's hand and pressed it to his lips. Will smiled and kissed Pellinore again, which he now reciprocated, with passion.

"Let's go to the bedroom," Pellinore suggested when they finally parted.

The bedroom was a bit less ostentatious, only the heavy beige curtains ruining its simplicity. Pellinore seemed to lose his resolution again as he uncertainly went to the curtains and smoothed them down. Will looked at the bed - it was reasonably big and old-fashioned, complete with a canopy. He touched the sturdy wooden frame and said: "If you're still of a mind for it, take off your clothes."

Deciding he needed to lead by example, Will undid his own necktie.

Pellinore turned away from the window and said: "The _Acherontia Mortifera,_ the moth with the skull pattern you wondered about, is very dangerous."

Will unbuttoned his waistcoat and let it fall to the floor, the gold watch making a heavy thud. He bent down for it and clicked it open: the hands were spinning around madly - it was all a dream, after all.

"Once in Romania," Pellinore continued as Will took off his shirt, "I met a woman who complained of a terrible headache. And would you believe--"

He paused when Will undid his trousers and pulled them off, stepping out of his shoes at the same time.

"Would you believe, the Acherontia had laid eggs into her ear? And now the larvae were eating her brain," Pellinore resumed.

"Yes, well that's not that uncommon, not hard to believe at all," Will said, removing the rest of his garments. "Come here."

Pellinore obediently crossed over to the bed, holding still as Will helped him with his own clothes. "Imagine if I hadn't come sooner and pulled the larvae out, they would've made a nest in her head, completely clean out the brain cavity and pupate."

He was still half clothed, his shirt open and his trousers just barely hanging on his narrow hips, when Will gently, but resolutely pushed him down to sit on the edge of the bed.

"And when the time came, those terrible moths would burst out of her decomposing skull," Pellinore said, following with his eyes as Will knelt in front of him.

"I hate when that happens," Will said and, hitching the heavy fabric of Pellinore's trousers a bit further down, he leaned forward and did what he knew he could do very well, showing an exceptional, unprecedented prowess and invention. As he made young Pellinore tense and moan and sigh and pull on Will's hair, Will briefly regretted that he'd wasted his best performance on a man who could not appreciate his improvement, lacking his older self's frame of reference. And then he lost himself in the dream, receiving its fabricated realness with all senses. The familiar, slightly salty taste was the same as ever, even the ripple of pleasure that ran through Pellinore's body.

Will wiped his mouth and sat next to the disheveled Pellinore, who had stopped talking as soon as Will began and had not yet uttered a coherent word.

"What do you want to do next?" Will asked him.

Pellinore looked at him, nonplussed. "I don't know, do you like playing chess?"

Will laughed and again regretted the older Pellinore wasn't here to witness this. "No, I mean in bed."

Color was still high in Pellinore's cheeks and it now deepened when he said: "I didn't realize there was more."

"There definitely is," Will said. He supposed euphemisms would not work very well with young Pellinore - who had just suggested a board game - and it was best to cut straight to the chase. "You have two options," he told him, "either on your back - or, well, not on your back. Or we can play chess, I suppose, although I can assure you that I will make a much calmer opponent once my own needs have been taken care of."

After some deliberation, Pellinore chose the second option, perhaps at random or perhaps intimidated by the prospect of looking into Will's eyes the whole time. He also consented to remove the rest of his clothes.

Seeing the broad naked shoulders, and the long slender back in front of him, Will had another idea. He shifted downward and took the pliant skin on Pellinore's arse between his teeth and bit down, experimentally.

"Ah," said Pellinore, which could mean many things.

The next _Ah_ Pellinore made came a while later and it was quite clearly a vocalization of pain - but Will supposed that was inevitable. Pellinore sank his head down and Will took care to be slow and careful. He wasn't sure if he was getting the right angle and wasn't quite on older Pellinore's level of self-control, but gradually, the young Pellinore below him seemed to relax into the movements and even respond to them, his _Ah's_ growing softer and more reflective of pleasure. When the moment of completion was about to come, Will had another wistful thought of older Pellinore being here to see it. What his reaction might be was a mystery to Will and would most likely remain that way since he had no plans of sharing this with him, certainly not in the immediate future.

"No one's ever done this to me before ... God," young Pellinore said, breathless. He had collapsed down on the bed, turning on his back, his messy black hair framing his pale face, his eyes teary. Will lay down next to him.

After a while of recovering, Pellinore turned to Will and, taking Will's hand, declared: "I want to tell you something, William: Never in my life have I met someone so exceptional to me as you are - not only is it already apparent to me that before meeting you, I was lost, drifting through life without direction ..."

... Alright, this is too much, I'm really getting carried away with the fantasy, Will chastized himself, once again realizing he was the one in control of the dream. He rewound the scene to make it more Pellinore-like:

Pellinore turned to Will and, taking Will's hand, he said: "I want to tell you something, William, before today I never would have imagined I'd ever meet someone like you."

"What do you mean?" Will probed.

"Well, what I have just said, that, in the context of other people I've met, my encounter with you has certainly been special."

"Do you perhaps want to say I'm indispensable to you?" Will suggested.

"... Well, we barely know each other, I'm not sure - of course, it feels as if I'd known you all my life, so -"

"Just say it."

"What?"

"You know what."

Pellinore blinked and drew away from Will. "You've known me for four hours and you're already telling me what to do? You're worse than my fiancée."

" _You have a fiancée?_ "

"Of course, why do you think I took that photograph in the first place? Really, Will Henry, sometimes I wonder about what goes on in your head - if anything."

"What did you call me now?"

"I called you by your rightful name: Will Henry, Will Henry, Will Henry! Will Henry! Will Henreee! Where the devil are you?"

Will abruptly sat up in the bed and stared around himself, realizing he was no longer in the cozy New York bedroom lit by the golden lamplight, but back in Harrington Lane, in broad piercing daylight. At some point last night, his elaborate daydream about young Pellinore must have lulled him into sleep so deep that it carried him through the night and well into the next day.

Realizing the real Pellinore must be back home from his trip, Will half-fell off the bed and started pulling on his trousers so as not to be caught in bed at high noon. The vivid memory of the dream made him burn with absurd guilt and embarrassment.

But already there were footsteps behind the door and now it opened: "There you are! Can't you answer? I've been calling you forever." Will froze with one trouser leg on. For reasons he could not explain under the strictest of interrogations, he let the trousers fall to the floor and crawled back into the bed.

Pellinore stared at him; he was in his full traveling attire, exuding the coldness of the outside. "What's the matter, are you ill?" he asked, concerned.

Will put on what he hoped was the face of brave suffering: "Yes, hem, hu-hem, my throat ..."

Pellinore sat down on the bed next to him, pulled off his glove, and placed his cool palm on Will's forehead: "Well, you're not running a fever," he touched his cheek, "although you feel a bit hot... poor Will Henry, I leave for one day and look what happens to you."

"I'm fine," Will mumbled, pulling the covers up to his chin.

"I'll make you some tea. And I suppose you want something to eat, too?"

While he was gone, Will upturned all the pillows looking for the old photograph, spotting it at last lying face down on the floor. He snatched it up and placed it into the _Origin of Species_ on the bedside table.

When Pellinore returned carrying a steaming cup and a plate of sweet rolls, Will sat up and, feeling suddenly famished, tore into the rolls. Then he remembered he was supposed to have a sore throat, stopped with half the roll stuffed in his mouth and made a show of laboriously swallowing it.

"You're acting very strangely," Pellinore observed. But then he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small wooden box. "Look, I brought you something."

Will gaped at the present: "You're acting very strangely, too."

"Just open it."

Will opened the box, expecting at best a new lens for the microscope, but to his surprise, it was a pocket watch: not gold, but silver, the engraving an intricate pattern of ornate swirls. It was beautiful.

Will stared at it, uncomprehending. "How," he said at last.

"Don't be afraid, it's just like a regular clock, only much smaller." Pellinore always laughed at his own jokes and he did it now too.

Will looked up at him, suddenly overcome with emotion. He reached up and cupped Pellinore's cheek: "You look so old."

"... You really should get some rest," Pellinore said, frowning. He took Will's hand off his face, got up and would have walked away had he not remembered something: "Have you had a chance to at least look at those letters?"

Will froze, for an insane moment thinking Pellinore meant Muriel's letters and that he, in his stupidity, had left to the drawer open yesterday, proudly displaying all his detective activities. Then he realized he had put everything back in order and Pellinore could not in fact read his mind and was merely asking about his usual correspondence.

"What? No! Yes, I mean, yes, I sorted them ... like you wanted."

Not missing the way Will's expression changed from shock to strained indifference, Pellinore gave him another strange look: "Lie down and rest, please. I'll be back presently."

Before Pellinore could close the door behind him, however, Will still had to ask:

"Say, did you ever - by any chance - have a moth collection?"

" _A moth collection_?" Pellinore asked. Will was dangerously pushing the moment when Pellinore would whip out his medical case and subject him to a thorough examination, drawing his blood, shining into his eyes, hitting his knee with a mallet and making him overall sicker than he felt before. "No, why - how would you even know that?"

 


End file.
